Four Easy Ways to Cut the Cost of Family Days Out by Train

*This is a collaborative guest post

Every parent knows the drill. You go online, price up train tickets for the whole family, and the total makes you want to close the tab immediately. So you drive instead, even though you know you’ll spend half the day stuck in traffic and the other half circling a car park.

But here’s the thing: train fares don’t have to be that expensive, and once you add up what petrol and parking actually cost, the train can come out cheaper for trips to London or the coast. Most people just don’t realise how many ways there are to cut the price down before they book.

1. Book in the 12-Week Advance Window

Advance fares go on sale up to 12 weeks before the travel date, and they’re typically the cheapest tickets you’ll find. They sell on a first-come, first-served basis, which means the best ones disappear fast. And when you need to get three or four seats, you can see why families need to be quick, particularly during school holidays when everyone else has the same idea. 

Count back 12 weeks from your planned trip, stick a reminder in your phone, and grab those tickets as soon as they drop. You will be locked into a specific train, so there’s no hopping on whichever service turns up. But a family of four on advance tickets can easily pay less than half the walk-up price, which more than makes up for the lack of flexibility.

2. Split Your Tickets on the Same Train

If you haven’t heard of this before, it may sound like a loophole, but it isn’t. Split ticketing means you buy two or more separate tickets that cover different parts of the same journey, and you don’t even need to change seats. Your train just has to stop at each station listed on your tickets. So you might buy a ticket from Basingstoke to Woking and then another from Woking to Waterloo, all while sitting in the same spot for the entire ride. 

Rail fares are priced in a way that makes the combined cost of two shorter tickets often cheaper than one long one. So, checking those split combinations against the direct fare is hands down the best way to find cheaper train tickets for days out. When you’re buying four tickets at once, even a small saving per person turns into something noticeable.

3. Travel Off-Peak Once the Rush Clears

Peak fares are designed for commuters who have no choice about when they travel. Families almost always do. If you can hold off until after 9:30am, you’ll hit off-peak pricing on most routes, and the difference in cost can be huge.

There’s another upside too: the carriages will be much quieter once the morning rush has passed, which anyone travelling with young kids will appreciate more than the fare saving itself. A mid-morning departure still gets you where you’re going by late morning, so you won’t lose much of the day at all. Just double-check the exact off-peak times on your route, because they vary between different train operators and it’s easy to get caught out by a few minutes.

4. Get a Family and Friends Railcard

At £35 a year, this card cuts a third off adult fares and 60% off kids’ fares, and it covers up to four adults and four children per trip, as long as at least one named adult and one child are travelling. Under-5s travel free anyway, and if all your kids are under five, buying one of them a child ticket (£1 minimum) will still unlock the adult discount. That makes it one of the best deals going for families who catch the train even a couple of times a year, because two return journeys will usually cover the cost of the card itself.

Bringing grandparents or another family along on a day out? They’re covered too. What really makes it useful, though, is that it stacks with off-peak and advance fares, so every other trick on this list can be combined into a single booking to drive the total price down even further.

Your Next Family Day Out Doesn’t Have to Cost a Fortune

That first price you see when you search for family train tickets is almost never the one you’ll actually pay. Advance booking, split tickets, off-peak travel, and the Family and Friends Railcard can all bring the total down to something far more reasonable, and sometimes the train ends up cheaper than driving once you account for fuel and parking. The tickets can save you money once you arrive, too, because National Rail’s Days Out Guide runs 2FOR1 entry deals at attractions across the country for people travelling by train.

Advance fares for the Christmas holidays are already appearing on many routes, and February half term tickets will go on sale around 12 weeks before, so set a reminder now and book the moment they drop. A bit of planning now means you could swap the usual motorway slog for a trip where the kids spend the whole journey watching the world fly past the window, and nobody has to argue about who saw the parking space first.